While we may not be mentally ready to start school in a couple weeks, the books are all here and shelves are ready and orientation meetings are underway. Homeschool year #12, here we gooooo! We've got some new things coming up this year and I hope we can keep up with ourselves!!
As I wrote in last year's back to school post, heart-shaping and virtue forming with Christ at the center are the priorities.
For Classical Conversations this year, Ben will be in Challenge III, Joey will be in Challenge I for his first year of high school (!), and Hannah will be in her second-to-last year of Foundations and Essentials!
Ben - Challenge IIII (junior year)
He'll be studying American history, five of Shakespeare's plays, poetry, chemistry, Algebra 2, Latin 2 (continued grammar/vocab/syntax lessons but also translating Caesar and Cicero), music theory, philosophy, and both Lincoln-Douglas and team policy debates. He continues with drivers ed with Andrew and he's doing a great job! He's still earning his supervised hours on his permit before he can get his license.
Ben is taking his first dual enrollment course through CC and Southeastern University. Classical Conversations calls this program CC+ and it allows students to earn college credit with their current coursework. This semester he just wanted to take 1 course to ease in, so he's taking Fundamentals of Speech. For his three major presentations at CC this semester, he will have record each one, submit the videos to the professor along with a few other things, and then take the feedback and work on growing in skill. We're looking forward to this opportunity for him to be assessed by another educator and take a step up in personal responsibility with this. The plan is to then take English comp next semester.
Joey - Challenge I (freshman)
How is my middle kiddo a freshman in high school? I'm not sure, but here we are. Joey will be studying American historical documents, American literature and composition, biology, Algebra 1, Latin, team policy debate, intro to Shakespeare, formal logic, and economics. This year will be a big jump in workload, being mindful of pacing big projects, and time management.
Hannah - Foundations and Essentials (5th grade)
We're continuing on with Saxon math (she's close to being done with 6/5), All About Spelling level 5, reading literature from the Ambelside Online list and other classics that sound good, grammar and writing through the Essentials program at CC, Mystery of History vol 2, Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space (with related activities from The Sandbox on CC Connected). She'll continue with keyboarding that we started this summer, CC memory work practice, and oral presentations each week.
Afternoon Collective
This is our "morning time" that we typically get to after lunch. I don't have a specific schedule we follow but we tend to hit whatever sounds good for the day from the following: read aloud, poetry, Chad Bird's devo going in depth with Hebrew words from the Old Testament, hymn study, and biographies out of 50 People Every Christian Should Know. Sometimes we'll listen to classical music and look at artwork together too. The whole idea is spending time together, being immersed in the good, the true, and the beautiful.
New Classes!
I've had my eye on a small co-op that meets at a church literally down the road from us, and this year there are some courses that looked appealing for my crew. The boys are going to do a 3 hour home improvement class where they'll learn the basics of drywalling, possibly hanging doors, and working with home electric. Hannah will spend one of those hours volunteering (with me) in the nursery which will help her with the volunteer hours she needs for American Heritage Girls. She will then take two more classes - I'm leaning toward fun medieval history class and a book club.
Other Electives
The boys continue on with piano lessons (after getting a nice break this summer), taekwondo, and youth group at church. Hannah continues on with a small art class at a friend's house on Fridays and American Heritage Girls.
After what was a pretty tough year last year, we're looking forward to all of these opportunities this year and are asking the Lord for energy and grace to get through it all!
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